^∞Fouroboros

40,000 women with Lexan^® Spheres of Death are headed this way.


[Janeane Garofalo as The Bowler in Mystery Men - 1999]


They're coming! With crazy shirts! Outrageous shoes! And money to burn!

The Women's International Bowling Congress, that is. Now, how do we get them to think about coming back before they've even left?

Simple: Say "Thank you!" first, then say "Please?" Michele over at Wonderbranding explains how common sense and people-friendliness in deed, not just in brochure copy, makes a difference:

These ladies should have no problem finding their way around. The city of Wichita has created nearly 100 new blue traffic signs with letters and arrows that may seem foreign to Wichita residents, but are crystal clear to members of the WIBC. "Forty frames" refers to the forty-frame tournament at one bowling alley. Signs reading "D/S" are directing bowlers to where they compete in doubles and singles. The "WIBC" signs direct teams to another competition.

Wichita's Marketing Director Jessica Johnson explains the reason for the signage:

"That signage is part of rolling out the welcome mat and making sure everybody knows where they are going, and hopefully so we can relive this so they will remember how great they were treated here in Wichita, and they will want to come back."

A nice backward marketing plan - say thank you first, then say please.... as in please return very soon.

Cost of the signage? About $10,000. Estimated boost to Wichita's economy? About $40 million. A small investment with big returns.

Yeah!

I take it to read that those are REAL, regulation blue DOT amenity signs a la "Hospital" or "Crunchy Frog Museum -->" placed unselfconsciously alongside the everyday "I-70" And "No turn on Red" variety around Wichita.

How perfect. We all say "Come on down, we'll treat you like family." But how many times have you taken someone up on it and found they'd actually added a spare bedroom for you? Same thing here. Permanence says: You matter.

Bowling Bodiceas caps off an excellent series of posts on intuition by Michele. My left brain salutes her. My right brain is still coveting Garofalo's neato-torpedo bowling ball above.

“The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.”

That's from John W. Gardner's Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society 1995. It's great--as was he. It's short--as is life. It's simple--as are most things, if we're honest with ourselves....

SELF-DEVELOPMENT. Not just skills, but the whole range of our own potentialities for sensing, wondering, learning, understanding and aspiring. Gardner points out that this does not happen until one gets over the odd notion that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE. By midlife we are accomplished fugitives from ourselves. Our lives are filled with diversions; our heads stuffed with knowledge; we are involved with people. Result: weve never taken time to probe our inner selves. We dont want to know ourselves. We dont want to depend upon ourselves. We cant stand to live with ourselves. A better way is to develop a more comfortable view of who you are. It is the true basis of inner strength.

COURAGE TO FAIL. By the time we reach middle age, we carry in our heads a long list of things well never try again because we tried once and failed. Mature people learn less because they are willing to risk less. Theres no learning without difficulty and fumbling, but if you want to keep on learning, you must keep risking failure.

LOVE. Develop the ability to have mutually fruitful relations with others. Be capable of accepting love and giving it; of depending upon others and of being depended upon. Develop the ability to see life through anothers eyes and reach out to others.

MOTIVATION. A self-renewing person is highly motivated. The author points out that motivation isnt a fuel that gets injected into your system (motivation speakers wont do it); its partly inner energy and partly the result of the social forces in your life. Gardner makes the point that we live in an over-verbalized civilization. Words have become more real than the things they signify and we need to return to the solid earth of direct experience because we are drowning in meaningless word tonnage.

[From a fine Amazon reader review of the book]

To learn more about this incredible individual (founder of Common Cause, Secy. of HUD, War Hero, the list is too long), visit The Gardner Center at Stanford University.

New World ~ Old Europe. Compare and contrast.

From Britain's Management-issues.com blog [scroll, no permalinks]:

Digging your own grave
07 April 04 | Management Issues
Categories: Globalisation. 

More emotive stuff here about offshoring, this time from USA Today. If just seeing your job shipped overseas isn’t bad enough, it seems that some US employers are asking (OK, make that forcing) their employees to train their offshore replacements before they get given the pink slip.

Here's what typically happens: U.S. workers getting pink slips are told they can get another paycheck or beefed-up severance if they're willing to teach workers from India, China and other countries how to do their jobs. The foreign workers typically arrive for a few weeks or months of training. When they leave, they take U.S. jobs with them. The U.S. employees who trained them are then laid off.

What really grabs attention, though, is the statistic from a survey by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers that almost one in five information technology workers has lost a job or knows someone who lost a job after training a foreign worker. And seven out of ten say they would support legislation requiring companies to inform local officials if they plan to use US workers to train foreign replacements.

In an election year, numbers like these are hard to ignore, and we wouldn’t be at all surprised to feel a wind of protectionism blowing in from the US if things continue as they are. With reporting like this, it isn’t hard to see what side USA Today is on in the debate.

Employees forced to train their replacements say the practice is a stark illustration of how the hiring of foreign workers is plundering U.S. jobs. In the next 15 years, American employers will move about 3.3 million white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages abroad, according to Forrester Research. That's up from $4 billion in wages in 2000.

Here comes the Sun, doot-n-doo-doo.....

Big bonuses again at B&Q
29 March 04 | Management Issues
Categories: Compensation & Benefits. Motivation.

Staff at UK DIY superstore chain B&Q are to share in a £34m bonus bonanza following a 13 per cent rise in profits to £372 million.

The average bonus for employees in the chain's 320 stores will be equivalent to about 10 per cent of their salary. This equates to roughly £845 for a ' customer adviser' and almost £3,500 for a store manager.

B&Q's staff are benefiting from big bonuses for the second year running. Last years' pay-out of £28 million gave them an extra nine per cent of their salaries.

It is company policy to offer all staff a guaranteed profit-share bonus of six per cent with the remainder based on the individual worker's salary and how well their store has done.

B&Q marketing director David Roth said: "The success of our stores, and ultimately the company as a whole is determined by the people who work here and it is only fitting that their hard work, enthusiasm and dedication is rewarded in this manner.

"I know that many of our staff have already made some special plans for their bonuses and they thoroughly deserve it."

John Lewis employees' bonus bonanza
11 March 04 | Management Issues

The 59,000 staff of UK retailer the John Lewis Partnership will be sharing a £87 million bonus this year, an increase of 29 per cent over 2003 and equivalent to just over six weeks pay for each employee.

This year's increase follows a 10 per cent increase in profits at the group to £277 million.

The company, which has no outside shareholders and is run as a partnership for the beneift of those who work in it, distributes a proportion of its profits every year as bonuses.

The success of the business is largely due to the vision of John Spedan Lewis, whose personal belief that the the real advantages of ownership should go to those who gave their time and labour to the business rather than to those who had supplied the capital led to the creation of the company's unique structure in the early part of the 20th century.

"The Partnership was meant to enable people to feel that they might be making a contribution of real value to the ceaseless experimenting that is necessary to human progress. It was meant for people who need not only something to live by but something to live for," he said.

How sad that more than half a century later, so many organisations still ignore the simple message that John Spedan Lewis saw so clearly - and which the company he led still thrives on today.

La-la-la-la-la.Cha-ching.

Bodicea Emotes

Bodicea here - a fouro partner and, yes, my debut! Couldn't sit still with all the hormonal references flying without adding my pennies. Since everyone has an opinion, here's mine.

When men use “feeling” they are often admired as evolved enlightened individuals and regarded as compassionate leaders. When women use “feeling” it’s often suspect as hormonal imbalance or the inability to hang with the boys. That's the generalization. But emotions do not have Mars-Venus ownership rights. Though often stereotyped by gender bias and false assumption, emotions are more apt to go unacknowledged - - better left to drift in the abyss than open THAT can of worms. Why? Might you be wrong? Might you loose control of a situation? Might you have to concede? Might you have to change? You might.

You might also grow. Now that’s real scary stuff!

It is basic human nature (R-complex to use Fouro's refs) to want to protect oneself. It’s personal. And it’s real. When it comes to emotions, yours or mine, it’s easier to discount or “spread sheet” a situation, reduce it to facts or figures, than to open one’s heart and mind (left down one’s guard) and recognize that what has been done, or not done, has affected a human being. Could be someone else, could be me.

Emotions: We all have them. And just like minds they are terrible things to waste.

Emotion, good or bad, is powerful stuff. Left unattended, emotions can manifest in ways more destructive than constructive. Take a lesson from a tamtrumming two-year old, a disconnected teen, or a professional “isolated deliverer.” Without compassion in business or in the home, edict what you want in the figurative “boardroom”, but it’s the personal conversation at the “water cooler” that will make or break your stride. Go ahead, feed the dragon: you’ll just have to slay it later. And it may have two heads by then. A real leader - - male or female, professional or parent or child - - intuitively knows that “Leaders don’t just make products and make decisions. Leaders make meaning” (John Seeley Brown).

Everything is personal, not impersonal; and Emotions are Business.

The HAVING of Feelings in the workplace, as in life-space, is not rare - - just denied. Feelings are something to be shared, not flaunted superficially. And Compassion is another way of letting a person know that you hear their concerns, understand their position, relate to their dilemma, or even “feel their pain.” Moreover, Compassion is the greater giving of your time and your attention to let someone else know you noticed them - - and they matter. It’s a bridge. It builds relationships. It reduces barriers. It creates allies. It takes courage. It unleashes curiosity. It reveals leaders. And not all leaders sit at the head of a boardroom table, but you’d better have one directing your “Customer Advocacy” division or your child's classroom.

Why does being heard matter? At the risk of yet another quote,

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that what's deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit. (e.e.cummings).

And once you’ve made this connection, a life-time customer you will have. (And I’m not referring to the estrogen network). You may also discover that you like yourself a little better than before.

Anyone can be in charge, and many think they are. Anyone can sell a product, but few do it well. And anyone can be a parent, though many should not. But when you personally invest yourself, your feelings, in any of these roles, you emerge stronger and better for it and closer to your goal. How do you realize a goal, a dream, unless you allow yourself to dream? As Emerson said best, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.” And if what lies within us is our best part, why then do we rarely find and often devalue the experience or its expression?

Oprah understands this.

It doesn’t take a woman to recognize the heart is home to everything. We just recognize it sooner than most men.

Thanks for letting me share [grin].

Ooooh.



Ford GT $150,000.

Just stumbled on this. Considering the last post on feeling over logic maybe this is what that Jung guy calls "synchronicity." I'm sticking with Ooooh.

Housewives.... Redux

Simran points out in comments that he was being facetious and begs the mercy of the Estrogen Goddess (Hey, I married a Warrior, it's a move I've been perfecting for years):

I think that business has lagged behind in realizing what appeals to women, and that there is tremendous potential for those that choose to do things right.

A successful business today is different from a successful business 40 years ago - the responsiblities have changed, and emotion is a part of that.

Fair enough. But, as they say, many a truth spoken in jest. It was a prototypical example of a real problem.

That 40 years-change example seems right give or take. We've mastered the scientific method and global overnight delivery, but those are all the "easy" problems if I may be so bold. They merely require an understanding of sequencing, logistics and statistical analysis. What the hell--they require analysis. These are primarily left cortex skills, and vital, but only half the equation.

Many messes I get to witness or help clean up are due to the fact that some (most?) business thinkers proudly wear their rationality on their sleeve, but when stressed or challenged, they revert to limbic and self-defeating behaviours they still insist are rational. In denying the validity and impact of feeling--their own and others--they guarantee negative outcomes because of the imbalance from this prejudice.

In a way, we become irrational in our rationality, unwilling to call a spade a spade and say, "I don't know", or "I made it up", or "we got lucky".

There's no shame in this. There is, however, plenty to dole out when we walk away from it's Elephant-in-the room influence. "Contempt before exploration leaves us in ignorance" is the essence of a quote from Herbert Spencer. It causes many of us to view innovation purely in terms of silicon chips or delivery systems, leaving a whole host of "business leaders" unaware and unarmed as they enter what's now being coined "the experience economy" or an "era of transformation."

Many can finesse a balance sheet within a nanometer and yet have little intuitive sense of the deeper meaning of the products and transactions and urges behind those numbers. If you can't understand you can't describe, and you can't teach. If you can't teach, you can't replicate on command. No command means no ability to reasonably manage, forecast and plan. And that means no pudding.

Leaders who fess up and admit this common understanding deficit and resulting urge to overcompensate, to deny imbalance, end up learning amazing things and profiting from them.

Andy Pearson--a subject in the original Oprah!/Business Leader debate--is but one of many examples of the benfits of evolving this understanding.

I think this is a very salient and productive topic. I'd love to hear more opinions from all corners.

How much skill does it take to exploit the emotions of housewives?

The Harvard Leadership Institute study mentioned a few posts back has generated its first subjective disagreement: Is Oprah! a "business leader"? [via Simran and Canadian Headhunter.]

It seems Harvard's Leader Database has named Oprah Winfrey to their Pantheon, and Simran begs to differ, quoting a Fortune article where the Diva of self-development chirpily proclaims: "I can't read a balance sheet!" In Simran's book, this makes her a powerful, successful Brand (Oprah!^®) but not the vaunted "Business Leader™". Well, people of goodwill can disagree, and if you want to witness that angle of the debate, it's here.

But, in the course of making his point, Simran notes:

...I've stated before that I admire her for her accomplishments, and she can read her market well (although I'm not sure how much skill it takes to exploit the emotions of housewives), but it is her attitude towards business skills that dismisses her as a business leader.

...how much skill it takes to exploit the emotions of housewives...

Oooh, boy. I'll leave aside "exploit" because, well, you gotta walk before you can run: In that tight little paragraph I see so much of the "urge to converge", reductive, cortical thinking that troubles business in these times of extreme flux.

How much skill does it take? According to Nielsen and Pew, J.D. Power Surveys, and PTA polling, it obviously takes more skill than Networks and Advertisers, Retailers and Manufacturers, School Boards and Politicians can muster.

Women are fleeing broadcast TV, yet cable remains a predominantly male medium. Where are they? Complaints of shoddy products and inneffectual service seem to plague a durable goods value chain that comprises largely of women-influenced purchases. Standards of Learning Tests and time-pressured 10 year-olds are an increasing worry to mothers and predominantly female classroom educators.

And who's calling the shots? Why, it's us proudly non-emotional boys with our sliderules. The Masters of the Universe who delight in reminding everyone that "It's not personal, it's business."

That is, until the 10k's bleed red and people are mapping out egress. We boys--the smart ones, at least--then have our often temporary epiphanies: Hey, this feeling stuff matters.

I won't bore you with more details, because we all know the following to be true, and we fight it at our peril: nobody ever threw themselves on a hand-grenade for a balance sheet.

Now, how about doing so for a true and powerful feeling of connection, protection, edifying self-image, commitment?

You betcha. Every day.

Hard to quantify? Sure. Non-discursive? Certainly. But keep trying. And don't look down your nose at the magic emotion can perform. If that's still hard to get your head around, I'll offer a specific: If customer service matters one whit to your enterprise, you'd better be exploring and amplifying the concepts behind that "squishy" word we call compassion--and mean it. Because it, Compassion, and it alone, is what compels and impels real CSM. Period.

Do I feel strongly about this? Is it showing? Good. So did another guy. His name was Ogilvy, not Oprah. And HE unequivocally belongs in the Pantheon of Business Leaders.

He said:

"The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife."

Why won't Donald Trump hire "Donald Trump"?

Daniel Gross at Slate has an interesting take:

In The Apprentice, Donald Trump set out to find his doppelgänger, the next aggressive, combed-over, self-important tycoon. But from a field populated with prickly, quirky, and assertive mogul-wannabes, Trump has narrowed his choices to a pair of mild-mannered guys: Kwame Jackson and Bill Rancic....

To a large degree, The Apprentice mimicked Trump's business. Most of the tasks the apprentice-wannabes tackled involved selling goods and services—lemonade, art work, a rental apartment, celebrity auction items, a party room—to gullible members of the public eager for a brush with boldface names at inflated prices. It is telling that no task involved, say, reading a balance sheet or a loan-amortization schedule—skills that are essential for real-estate development but in which Trump's record is less than stellar.

But over the last several weeks, as the crowd was winnowed from eight to the final two, Trump systematically weeded out the contestants who shared his style. Virtually all of the final eight worked in sales or marketing—except Kwame. But Trump found each of them wanting....

Of course, both Kwame and Bill seem like good, capable guys. They didn't ruffle feathers, play mind games with fellow contestants, or lie. They didn't incite fear, desire, or envy, which is one of the reasons they survived week after week. They both seemed grounded and capable of having a conversation about someone other than themselves. They're the kinds of guys The Donald would probably like his daughter Ivanka to date. And the kinds of guys who would make fine executive vice presidents and middle managers at a Fortune 500 company. The show that was supposed to mint New York's next brash entrepreneur has instead given us the Organization Man, 2004.

Don't trump Trump? Why cannibalize the Flagship Brand? Maybe it takes a BS-er to spot a BS-er. Stay tuned.

Okay, now this is getting ridiculous.

Or maybe not. Given all my harrumphing about leadership and courage and brand and yadda-yadda on these pages, this was downright eerie.

Rob over at BusinessPundit has this:

A Harvard initiative has brought us the Great Business Leader database. There is an interview with Tony Mayo, the project director, here. This project has given us a new buzzphrase - contextual intelligence. According to the project, it can make all the difference.

Contextual intelligence is the ability to understand the macro-level factors that are at play during a given period of time. For our study, we looked at six contextual factors that shaped business during the last century and continue to shape it in our present century: government regulation, labor, globalization, technology, demography, and social mores. Within each decade of the twentieth century, these six factors ebbed and flowed, coalescing in unique combinations. A business leader's ability to make sense of his or her contextual framework and harness its power often made the difference between success and failure.

Interesting. I'll have to chew on this for awhile and post more on the topic once I have digested it.

Hmmmm.... Contextual Framing. Contextual understanding. Leading by context. Sensemaking. Harnessing latent power. Sounds familiar.

Here you go, Rob, some food for thought.



You quantify these according to a super-hyper-top-secret approach and optional Dick Tracy Decoder Ring that I can't blab about here. What's the general idea? From our old (sorry, being revamped) website...

What is a conceptual framework? In our view it's not getting caught up in your knickers--keeping your eye on the big picture while not floating off into space. Most important, it's a means to guide thinking, careers, organizations, brands or bake sales to self-replicating and surprising results.

A conceptual framework is not a box to put people in or to get outside of. It's literally a frame and a frame only. It's a geometric and philosophical diagram of what you do, what you believe, what you want and what you will and won't do to achieve those things. As a leader or owner of an organization, it's what you create before anything else, because, in times of indecision or crisis or plenty it will be your only intuitive, impartial and sublimely practical partner. it will make decisions for you. It will manage while you're on vacation. It will hire the best available people and turn away the unacceptable and unmotivated.

It's a counter-intuitive concept at first glance, since many of us have been taught that management and leadership, or persuading and inspiring, or acting and achieving, are the same thing. Well, they're not.

Leadership is not management. Management is management. Leadership is not inspiring others. Leadership is guiding others to self-inspire. Simplicity is not brevity. Simplicity is clarity. And simplicity is not an elevator speech.

Elevator speeches designed to impart the essence that something is worthwhile and worth listening to are myths. They are the result of impatient people trying to appease other impatient people. An elevator speech, if there is such a thing at all, should be a powerful connective moment that has the receiver reaching for the emergency stop button between floors. And then, cancelling her "important meeting" to beg you to share more. Seldom do "elevator speeches" even get close to this level of resonance or relevance or coherence.

Feature advantage benefit will not do it. Flowery prose about your company's competitive advantage won't do it. What will? The only thing that matters. The most basic thing that our impatience does much to squelch, yet the one thing that business or anything worthwhile is fundamentally all about: your search to become the idealized version of yourself. Your, our, everybody's need to be "a bigger better me."

When you create a brand, or a workspace for your people, or a retail environment where consumers meet your products and your people, do these things intuitively answer: "How can this experience make me a better version of myself?" That's an important question, because the answer is what separates the winners from the losers in an increasingly complex age where companies and employees and consumers are growing apart, not closer together. In this context, an organization's shared purpose, it's brand, is DNA . And it is the most important thing you can discover, not create, for your company.

©2001-2003 Alchemy LLC

Double hmmm... I like how all these guys are thinking. Finally.

Now, should I sue or ask them for a job? Maybe I should just "go Trump" on our web guys tomorrow?

Yeah, that's it. Then I'll fire myself.

[edited 4-14-04]

Business needs a Chief Courage Officer.

UPDATE: Courage needs a companion]

Did you see "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" this morning? If not, you didn't miss much with regard to politics. But you did miss a very powerful commercial launching a new governance-risk-leadership initiative from Price Waterhouse Coopers.

They ask a key question: Is Corporate America becoming too risk averse? Implicit in this question: Is that risk aversion oddly damaging the integrity and capacity of business for profit and good?



The spot is on their site, here--it's worth the 6mb download: [scroll down for link "Is the Chief Courage Officer a person, a position or a philosophy?"

The accompanying section of their website starts with this:

John Maynard Keynes called it the "animal spirits," that intangible quality required to move forward.... Where does your company stand on the courage continuum?

The true spirit of American business rewards those who evaluate risk and make smart decisions. But the results of our latest survey of nearly 1,400 CEOs in 40 countries are evidence that this spirit has been tamped down by recent events.

* When asked if the current business climate was making companies excessively risk-averse, 11 percent of CEOs said yes. 46 percent said it was making companies somewhat risk-averse.
 
* Although US CEOs remain confident about their prospects for revenue growth this year, more than two-thirds (68%) believe the current environment is making companies risk-averse.

* Only 5% of US CEOs say they are significantly more aggressive in their attitude toward risk-taking, with 25% saying they are definitely less aggressive.

One CEO said in our survey: "You have to determine what kind of risks you can afford. It's like walking over a wire. Technically, there is not that much of a difference if the wire is one meter high or 50 meters high. Technically it's the same—but there is still a big difference."

So how do you make sure you have the systems in place to tell you what is a risk worth avoiding and what is an opportunity worth pursuing?

This is where the mandates of new legislation can present opportunities far beyond just legal compliance. An organization that has strategically integrated governance, risk management, and compliance can form an ethical and operational backbone against which the business can be managed.....

These guys are the big dogs. In their 2004 survey [PDF] of CEOs, with particular attention to Enterprise Risk Management, they recognize that the Statue-sense visually depicted in brain, metaphor, archetype, brand is a huge unmet "feeling" and ambition in business that's causing harm to organizations large and small. They also recognize that the people aren't the problem, and that the culture of numbering before sensing, organizing without human and contextual understanding is detrimental to healthy growth and confident, sustainable decision-making in fluid times. As such, it is judged a large missed opportunity which they seem finally willing to admit...

Life is too short. It is also measured in height, not weight.

My words, not theirs, but close enough.

The TV spot to introduce their finding succinctly puts into 60 seconds what a 1000 page survey and hundreds of meetings can't: Business can and should be a heroic calling. Plant your flag and dust off your ambition; meaning's coming to town, and he's bringing integrity with him.

Bravo, Price Waterhouse Coopers. Bravo for bravery.

[update: Courage needs a companion]

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for more on this theme scroll down for:

• Heroes for hire
• Doing or Being? Branding or Becoming?
• A brand is?